The Most Incredible Chilli Con Carne

This is really amazing and freezes perfectly for lunches during the week.  I guarantee you will love it!

2 tbsp olive oil

2 onions, chopped

3 garlic cloves, crushed

500g lean beef mince

250ml water

2 x 400g chopped tomatoes

6 tbsp tomato puree

1 x scotch bonnet chilli

1 x mild red chilli

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1 beef stock cube

sea salt

freshly ground pepper

1 x 400g kidney beans

1 small bunch basil, stalks finely chopped

1 small bunch coriander

1 green pepper finely sliced

1 tsp chilli power

1 tsp paprika

2 tbsp red wine vinegar

1. Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onion and garlic with a little salt.  Cook slowly for 10 minutes or until soft.

2. Add all of the dried spices, chilli, tomato puree, Worcestershire sauce, red wine vinegar and stock cube and cook for a few minutes.

3. Add the pepper and the finely chopped stalks from the basil and cook for a couple of minutes

4. Add the water, vinegar, tomatoes and cook for 45 minutes

5. Drain the kidney beans and add along with the coriander and basil leaves

6. Check the seasoning and get it tasting perfect adding any of salt, pepper, vinegar to get it perfect.

7. Serve with a jacket potato and sour cream.

Amazing.

Getting the best out of Lotus Notes users

Over the last 3 days, I've been visiting a few offices with a primary focus of helping users install multiple language packs for spellchecking.  It was this individual help which lead me to learning a very important lesson.

My day-to-day, high level role is to develop and maintain applications to improve the business.  Most of my time is spent these days developing XPages applications.  This is great and welcomed by the customers but during all this time some of the most powerful, fundamental features of Lotus Notes have been overlooked.  I'm not talking from a design point-of-view but more so the way users use Lotus Notes and especially what they are missing.

I've held several training sessions, sometimes with only groups of 3 but nothing can compare with taking 5 / 10 minutes with a user one on one.  Over the last couple of days, I've listened to their problems and have been able to solve and introduce different ways of working which has proved more rewarding for the user than any of the greatest XPage features.  As a developer, I have been guilty of assuming users are familiar with all of the basic features.  I've realised, they are not!